IT almost felt like MLA Lewis Clifton started to say the quiet part out loud during last week’s Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly when he announced that ExCo had tasked the AG with reviewing the ExCo publication policy – cos of the Argies, innit.
Surely this Assembly, who three weeks ago told the public they were “open to considering proposals to further enhance transparency” aren’t seriously considering closing down the one chance the public have to see how policy decisions are reached?
When I stated in this very column only last month that I could see geopolitics being used as an excuse to shut the public out I really didn’t expect it to be deployed so soon. That wasn’t meant to be a suggestion of how to run things guys.
Of course the real kicker, that wasn’t known until PN asked for the October ExCo papers, is that the latest set of documents won’t be made public until the position has been reviewed. Hold on a second, isn’t the idea that until you have an evidenced report telling you to change something you should stick to the status quo?
Instead ExCo have seemingly unilaterally decided to keep the October papers locked away in the filing cabinet.
The most recent ExCo papers the press and public are not being allowed to see include the already published annual education report, the consideration of the new executive director job, and the ITQ fees for 2027 to name just a few.
I doubt that those “whose interests may not align” with the Falklands really care about how many kids are enrolled at FICS or the justification of the creation of a new highly paid job, however these are real issues that directly impact people living in the Islands, and they deserve to know what justification there is behind policy decisions.
Unless I’ve not been reading ExCo papers properly, I’ve not actually seen any published which detail matters that could impact national security or include commercially confidential information, because unsurprisingly that is already exempt.
Worst of all, the Assembly who told the public on October 12 that they were not pursuing freedom of information legislation because there weren’t the resources to do it right now have somehow, a mere three weeks later, been able to find the resources to look into the shutting down of information in the public’s “best interest.”
The information that is being taken away from the public is information that does not need to be taken away, and all it achieves is making the scrutiny of important decisions harder.
The argument that the ExCo summary will continue to be read out in the Assembly offers no reassurance, because it means the only information being made available is a sanitised version written by the MLAs themselves. Without seeing any other information, we just have to take their word for it.
The choices to stop sharing information have been taking place from the moment this Assembly was elected – geopolitics is just the latest excuse to systematically stop sharing information with the public.
I sincerely hope that the outcome of the AGs report to ExCo bucks that trend and does not recommend a further shutting down of information sharing. Although I’m not sure I’ll be holding my breath at being able to see the detail in that report.
